geekosystem

Last month, Mac users experienced one of the first widespread trojans since the platform regained popularity, the Flashback trojan. Apple was quick to release a security tool to remove the trojan, and now, Dr. Web, the security firm that initially discovered the trojan, notes that while computers are still infected by the trojan, the rate of infection is decreasing at around a staggering 100,000 computers per week.

Earlier this month, the Mac community first became aware of Flashback (or Flashfake), a nasty piece of malware that used a Java exploit to turn infected computers into part of an ever-growing botnet. When its presence was announced, it was estimated to have infected over 600,000 computers. Now, thanks to quick action by Apple and security firms, the number of infected computers is estimated to be under 30,000. However, this probably marks the death of Mac's fictional invulnerability to malware and other digital nasties.

Hey, remember that nasty bit of malware called Flashback that we wrote about a few days back? Yesterday, Apple pushed out a security update that will remove the most common variants of the trojan, and updates Java in an effort to prevent future infections from occurring. If anything could take a bite out of the over half-million reportedly infected Macs, it's this.

For some, one of the reasons to get a Macintosh computer was that there were few nasty viruses or other malicious junk floating around that could affect your machine. However, this kind of attitude can only lead to trouble and now the Russian security company Doctor Web says that one particular trojan called Backdoor.Flashback.39 has infected over 550,000 Apple computers.